atmosphere

Space telescopes have the advantage of not being subject to the blurring effects of the Earth's atmosphere. In addition, there are many wavelengths from the electromagnetic spectrum that do not reach Earth because they are absorbed or reflected by the Earth's atmosphere. In fact, as you can see from the diagram below, it is only the wavelengths of visible light, a small portion of infrared, and a part of the radio wavelengths that reach Earth at all.